Maria
From Silent Hill Wiki
Silent Hill 2: Born from a Wish
| “ | It doesn't matter who I am. I'm here for you James. See? I'm real.
| ” |
Maria is one of the main characters in Silent Hill 2. She meets up with James Sunderland in Rosewater Park and stays with him sporadically after that. She is physically identical to James' late wife, Mary, although her appearance and personality is more sexually extroverted. Maria is a very enigmatic character, and she could be seen as some sort of reincarnation or ghostly form of Mary, as a supernatural and possibly sinister creature of unknown origin, or some combination of these. At times she seems to channel Mary's memories.
Due to some of her behavior and her attempts to make James accept her (even going to the extreme of trying to kill him when he refuses her), she can be considered the main antagonist of the story as she tries to "trap" James into his past, refusing to letting him go. Despite her actions, Maria is not a truly evil character.
James is both attracted to her and fearful of what Maria might represent, and he struggles to understand her. Maria appears to be some sort of phantom created by James' desperation to see Mary again, an idea supported by the title of Maria's scenario, Born From a Wish. Born From a Wish suggests that in the beginning, even Maria isn't really sure who or what she is, but by the time she first encounters James she is beginning to "remember" him somehow.
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Personality
The booklet accompanying the game describes her as the opposite of Mary, "cheerful and energetic," but she's also a rather dark and moody character. Her personality is highly unpredictable: sometimes she is fearful and clingy, at other times she speaks tenderly to James, and at other times she is more teasing or even cruel. She seems consistently concerned about Laura, the little girl who has a connection to Mary.
Silent Hill 2
Born From a Wish
Chronologically speaking, the Born From a Wish minigame serves as Maria's introduction in the Silent Hill universe, although this prequel game was created after Silent Hill 2's release. The Maria we see in Born From a Wish is much less sassy and confident than in the main game, and it is suggested that she has no memory of who she is or how she came to be there, furthering the ambiguity of the character's origins. We also learn that Silent Hill is Maria's birth town, indicating that Maria had either lived in Silent Hill before or this is just where she was created from James' wish. Maria was produced by James' delusions as a result of his inability to bear the weight of the crime of killing his wife. It is established in the third game that her model was a dancer at the club "Heaven's Night".
In the beginning, Maria wakes up alone and frightened in Heaven's Night. After pondering to herself about what she should do, she eventually decides to try and find someone else in the town. She begins to wander through the streets of South Vale until she eventually enters the Baldwin Mansion, an area out of bounds in the main game. Here she meets the owner of the mansion, Ernest Baldwin (although she never actually sees him; all their conversations are shared between locked doors.) Ernest speaks in a strange monotone, and asks her to find him the "white liquid" in the Blue Creek Apartments to help him bring back his dead daughter, Amy. Maria helps him with this, even though it may not work, stating, "I don't mind fighting for an impossible cause."
While she's exploring the house, she finds a teddy bear in a child's room. She comments that Laura would love that toy (suggesting she has Mary's memories). After Maria brings back the white liquid to Ernest, he reveals slightly more about her. Maria tells Ernest she doesn't really believe in "Fate" and he warns her that James is a bad man, and that he's looking for "the you that isn't you". This seems to stir something in Maria, who begins to remember things about James - that he wasn't good with his wife during the illness and killed her. But she also remembers that underneath James is a kind person. Maria then opens the door, but the room where Ernest is in is empty. She leaves the Baldwin Mansion and enters the alley behind the Blue Creek Apartments. She briefly considers suicide, but refrains and tosses her gun over a wall. She decides to follow her fate, hoping that James would accept her as she is.
Letter from Silent Heaven
Some ways into the main game, Maria's story begins (or resumes, following the prequel minigame) when James, the game's protagonist, stumbles across her in Rosewater Park; seeing her in the fog, he mistakes her for Mary. He is taken aback by how much she resembles Mary, and her response is seductive and somewhat mocking. James is about to leave when she then turns clingy, pointing out that there are monsters everywhere, and she asks if she can stay with him. He agrees. James and Maria eventually make their way to Pete's Bowl-O-Rama from Rosewater Park. James enters but Maria stays behind, her excuse being that she "hates bowling". When James returns minutes later, after an encounter with Laura and Eddie Dombrowski, Maria says she saw Laura run out of the building and she insists that James help look for her.
Eventually they follow Laura to Brookhaven Hospital. They explore the hospital together before Maria becomes sick and asks to rest. James leaves her in one of the hospital rooms. If the player checks on her after that she will still be there, looking very unwell. Eventually, when you return to the room in Alternate Brookhaven Hospital, Maria is nowhere to be found. Fortunately Maria soon bumps into James again but grows angry at James' lack of concern towards her, and his devotion to Mary. Their time together though is short-lived as while running through the hospital's basement, Maria is apparently killed by Pyramid Head in front of James.
While exploring the Labyrinth, James stumbles onto Maria, locked behind a cell wall. She starts to confuse James by talking to him in a very peculiar manner and behaving in a way similar to Mary's personality (especially when she mentions his videotape in the Lakeview Hotel.) She then reverts back to her old self and tries to seduce James very suddenly, hinting sexual favors if he gets her out of the cell. Desperate and confused, James promises to return once he's found a way to rescue her from the cell, but when he does finally return, Maria is dead again. This time she seems to have been beaten to death.
Towards the end of the game James finds Maria alive again, this time strung up and being tortured by the Pyramid Heads. Maria calls out for James to help, but he can only watch as one of the Pyramid Heads impales Maria in front of him with its spear. He realizes that the Pyramid Heads keep killing Maria to remind him of his crime and punish him for killing Mary ("I was weak. That's why I needed you. Needed someone to punish me for my sins. But that's all over now. I know the truth. Now it's time to end this."). Then he fights the two Pyramid Heads - after a period of time they realize that they cannot defeat James. They kill themselves as they are no longer needed - James finally understood his sins and received punishment for them.
Outcomes of Maria
There are two different outcomes for Maria, depending on what ending you get. They are as follows;
In the In Water, Leave and Rebirth endings. When James goes up to the platform at the end, Maria is there, although she disguises herself as Mary, as a final, desperate attempt to make him stay with her. However, James tells her he no longer needs her, as she could never substitute the true love he shared with Mary. Angered at this, she transforms into the final boss and tries to kill James, but ends up being defeated. Maria crashes to the floor and whispers his name, until James finally kills her.
In the Maria ending, when James goes up to the platform at the end, Mary appears instead of Maria. She tells him that James killed her because she was a burden to him ("I know I was a burden on you. You must have hated me. That's why you got rid of me"). He admits that it's the truth (It's true... I may have had some of those feelings. It was a long three years... I was... tired...). Mary tells James she will never forgive him for what he did and transforms into the final boss. After she is defeated, James is looking out over the lake from Rosewater Park, where he first met Maria. Here, he reunites with Maria, who is once again alive and apparently well and they leave Silent Hill. As they leave Silent Hill, however, Maria starts coughing, implying she has the same illness Mary had suffered from, and the events that drove James to murder may repeat themselves.
Interestingly, which ending you get is based on subtle aspects of how you treat Maria during the game. If you protect her well from monsters and visit her frequently while she is feeling sick at the hospital, you are more likely to get the "Maria" ending. Silent Hill's creators have said that none of these endings are the "true" one; each is meant to be true for the individual player.
Silent Hill 3
In Silent Hill 3, Heather Mason finds a poster in Heaven's Night of a woman with long black hair with "Return of Lady Maria!" on it.
This could suggest that Maria's appearance was actually based off a dancer in Heaven's Night (as Silent Hill 2 implies that Maria was born from James' wish), or that Maria changed her hair drastically. It is unknown if Maria and Lady Maria are the same person.
In "The Making of Silent Hill 2", Takayoshi Sato (CGI Creator of Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2) stated that Maria had bleached her hair from black from blonde (also evidenced by her dark roots) and added pink streaks. This gives the possibility that Maria and Lady Maria are the same person.
Insight on Maria
Maria frequently reminds James that she's "real". When they first meet, she states "I don't look like a ghost, do I? See, feel how warm I am?" and later, "It doesn't matter who I am. I'm here for you, James. See? I'm real." This is open to many interpretations, including that Maria is solely meant for James himself, as he (besides Ernest, who was hinted at as being a ghost) is the only person she encounters. This is most likely the reason she stays outside of the bowling alley, avoiding Eddie and Laura. Maria is never present whenever James encounters another human; she is aware of Laura and claims to have seen her, but the two characters are never seen together.
Her isolation from the other characters enhances her phantom-like qualities and furthers the idea that she was created for James alone. Though in the Born From a Wish scenario, it is revealed that Maria knew about Laura before she met James and does not know why she knows Laura. There is a chance that Maria was also created for Laura in her memories of Mary.
By the time James meets her, she already knows that he killed Mary. Maria decides to follow her "fate", and seems to keep reminding James of Mary's death, as Maria (an illusion of Mary) dies many times during the game. She may also be trying to punish James, as he keeps reliving her death over and over again.
She leads James in the right direction and gives him many subtle clues on where to go next. She asks him "Is this your only "special place"?", tells him about the Lakeview Hotel, saying "I'll bet it was." She tells James where Laura is, unlocks the only way to the hospital, and notifies James that Laura is there.
Because Maria is an "illusion" of Mary and has her memories, she wants to keep Laura safe, and requests for James to look for her. She shares the desire from Mary for James to love her, for example, in the hospital when she asks what James would do if he couldn't find Mary. The Maria ending is an example of Maria and James getting together.
She also knows James' name and says it many times, even though he never told her his name before, precisely when James examines the wall and Maria says "James, you can't make it through there." James never seems to notice that he never told Maria his name. Likewise, she also knows Laura's name and speaks it if James tries to exit the hospital "But we haven't found Laura yet."
Notes
- Maria appears to be visually designed after Christina Aguilera during the 1999 Teen Choice Awards. Aguilera's middle name is also Maria, however, this is just a coincidence.
- There is persistent butterfly and moth symbolism surrounding Maria in the game. She has a butterfly tattoo on her abdomen, and in many cultures, butterflies represent rebirth, which is relevant in her case for her being a new form of Mary (not unlike how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly). In the final boss fight, Mary/Maria attacks with a swarm of black moths, a symbol of death in some cultures.
- In the Lost Memories DVD, a photo of Laura and Maria sitting on the wall can be found.
- Maria's origin is linked up with the title of the mini game Born From a Wish. Maria could be the physical manifestation of Jame's wishes and desires. This would also explain why Pyramid Head often is after her - to reiterate the actuality of Mary's death and wake James from his delusion.
- The gallows platform in the prison shows two Pyramid Heads with spears, with a person in the middle hanged by a noose. This is very similar to when Maria is killed by the two Pyramid Heads.[1]
- Maria was the first female playable character in the Silent Hill Franchise. She, however, was not the first female main character, who was Heather Mason. Maria was only playable for a short time in a mini-story exclusive to Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams.
- A hack in the game can allow Maria to accompany James throughout the rest of the game in the PC or PS2 version. Through a PS2 cheat system such as an Action Replay or Codebreaker, or by downloading a hacked PC save, the player can hack the Old Bronze Key in their inventory (allowing Maria and James to enter the Historical Society) and skip the entire hospital level where Maria dies. [2]
Creator's comment
| “ | In the original scenario, the heroine also had an existence characterized by a double personality. The first personality is "Mary," so for the other, the name "Maria" is derived from that. | ” |
See also
- Love Psalm — Maria's theme that plays in Born From a Wish's credits
- Promise — Maria's theme that plays during the Maria ending
Gallery
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 Maria lying down on the stage of Heaven's Night |
 Maria at Rosewater Park |
 Maria at Rosewater Park |
 Maria in the Dog ending |
 Maria transforms into a monster |
![[1]](http://silenthill.wikia.com/index.php?title=Special:Outbound&f=Maria&u=http%3A%2F%2Fi32.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fd20%2FBloodThirsty_Vagrant%2FSilent%2520Hill%2FGallows.jpg){kind=link}